Developing and disseminating student projects with lay audiences (Display Project)

The sharing student projects website enhances the student experience by focusing on the knowledge generated by dissertations and student projects.

The research project students complete is often a competitive aspect of their experience and fuelled by anxiety and uncertainty. This means that research culture is often difficult to promote and encourage. This sharing student projects website helps to tease out examples of completed work and gives a focus for discussions between staff and students helps to create allyship across learners and provide a similar starting point for all future researchers.

Feedback from our students:
"I am excited that my project got featured. I do think it is very useful as I could embed the link to my CV too."
"It’s great to see the work I’ve done getting some exposure. I’m also hoping it has some impact on future research too."
"[I'm] thrilled to share that my alma mater, the University of Manchester, has publicly shared a summary of my dissertation! Grateful for all the support I received throughout my academic journey. Currently reflecting on the PHD proposal I've drafted, focusing on teachers' utilisation of AI and the potential data extraction risks it entails. [I'm] excited to continue my research journey!"
For academics, the webpages offer a means to incorporate dissemination within student projects and make this straightforward to implement.

The summaries democratise access to knowledge and achieve inclusion by opening up major project and dissertation elements of qualifications, and helps address gaps in student knowledge about the potential relevance and impact of their research. By encouraging students to access the summaries, preconceptions about projects can be challenged. Any programmes can use the summaries as they support the open research objective of democratising research in education by providing a rich depiction of the ways we think and frame research across student led activity.

This bespoke open access site streamlines the time required to upload and manage the summaries of student research project, offering a simple and workable plan to celebrate student work and recognise the value our students provide to our communities. I am fortunate to work with Taslima Ivy and Felix Kwihangana, and we have a range of support available to make this feasible for you and your programme.
Underpinning the webpage and summaries is an adaptable model that is flexible to allow for a range of different dissertation and research projects produced across different programmes. Each of the UG and PGT programmes that are contributing summaries can draw upon a set of higher education resources, making this straightforward to consider and implement.
If this is of interest, please get in touch: [email protected]

Key points to consider:
• The webpage and summaries help to cultivate equitable educational opportunities for students and intentionally creates a link between students who are developing ideas, students who have completed their activity and the research participants who contribute to data collection.
• Each entry has a unique URL supporting traceability, allowing students to share their work easily and refer others to their webpage.
• Each summary refers to a researcher (the student who produced the work).
• Clear messaging offered on webpages, suited to all audiences from beginning researchers to potential research participants.
• Accessibility and presentation of the search functions – students can search by programme or key word to easily retrieve examples.
• Students can use the summaries as examples of completed studies to encourage their communities and audiences to be aware of what research participation achieves.